Where does Google get its meta descriptions from?
-
We have a new client and they don't have meta descriptions yet. However, Google has assigned descriptions for them now appearing on the SERPs. The problem is that Google added a phone number that's totally not the client's and goes to a different unrelated business. Our plan is to update the meta to reflect the correct information, however, we're just perplexed as to how Google came up with the incorrect phone number. Where does it get its information from? The page currently has all the correct phone number, hours, and content.
I've read that Google sometimes also doesn't recognise our meta descriptions if it thinks they could serve up a better one. My next question is, what if Google insists on showing the incorrect phone number. Is there a way we can fix this? Thanks!
-
Thank you! Yes, we have a feeling the phone number came from a hidden code somewhere. We asked our client if their website was built by the same developer that built the site of the business where the phone number goes to. If this is the case, then that solves the mystery.
-
Hey!
Thanks for posting, that's a really good question,
Google will typically create a meta description based on the content of that page, in this instance if the meta description is completely missing Google will use an algorithm to pull through keywords that it deems relevant to the user's search query, directly from the copy of the page.
One negative of this is, you will have a lack of control over what is displayed in the SERPs about your brand.
If the meta description is pulling through an incorrect phone number, this may be caused by a hidden piece of code on the page, that Google deems relevant.
Do you have an the page URL as an example?
That being said, when you come to update the meta description, as long as it contains relevant and up to date information based on the content of the page and it's within Google guidelines, (150 - 160 Characters) then Google should not find the need to create a meta description, and the bogus number should no longer be displayed.
Hope this helps!
Thanks,
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Meta tags - removal
A couple of months ago, I did something that has caused me great angst. My website unique visitors was on a steady growth path for about 3 years. I swapped out my SEO plugin, from all-in-one, to Yoast. I then removed all of my meta tags. My site has about 2000 unique posts. After doing that my unique visitors has been on a steady decline of me loosing traffic at a rate of 5 to 10% of my visits. Any thoughts on the best remediation plan I should use. I put back in the meta tags, but wasn't sure of the SEO plugin switch caused the issue.
On-Page Optimization | | copykatrecipes0 -
Google Search - One page having problems
this issue is concerning my site - cruvoir.com we retail designer clothing online, and currently have 17 'designer' pages - one for each manufacturer brand name. We target these brand names for our campaign and track the progress with Moz and try to focus them in Google search. Of many of the designer names, we rank pretty well in Google search (usually under #15 when searching for the specific brand. All brands are doing well, except one brand : "Lost And Found" - a designer label we carry. This is the page for this brand name : https://cruvoir.com/5-lost-and-found we cannot figure it out. It happens to be our most important label we carry. when we search for this brand name or include it in any other search terms, we never are in the google search results. I expect it is a crawl issue, but we have covered all our ground in optimizing this brand page. It seems this page is also indexed with Google. But we cannot figure out why it does not rank us in search.
On-Page Optimization | | cruvoir0 -
Overlength Meta description
Hi, Has anyone got an answer to why a meta description would be showing characters well above 160. The current Meta description is only 10 characters in length but I wanted to know why Google would display so many characters. Cheers Phil
On-Page Optimization | | JamesDixon700 -
Google Authorship v Product Rich Snippets
Hi Folks, So ,we have a website that we have fully configured with Product Rich Snippets (its an e-Commerce Store), including product image and the usual. We are considering verifying the Authorship of the website for the client as they will have an extensive blog. My question is, if we verify the Authorship of the website, which will Google use in terms of the rich snippet photograph in the SERP, will it use the product image as detailed in the Product Rich Snippet or us the company logo we have on the Google Plus page (Verified Author) Or is it a case we only add the rel:author tag to pages without products. Would just like to verify before we continue on as Thanks in advance John
On-Page Optimization | | Johnny4B0 -
Which Meta Tags would you recommend having on the pages?
Hello, There are so many different meta tags which you can implement to the header of your website and I'm wanting to get people's opinions on which you feel are worth putting in and which are completely pointless? For example: Author Copyright Language Content-Type Content-Language Distribution Abstract Keywords Description Classification Canonical Expires Revisit-after Rating I look forward to hearing your comments and suggestions. Kind Regards, Shaun Swales Twitter: Https://www.twitter.com/CryptCommerce
On-Page Optimization | | ShaunSwales0 -
SEOMOZ returns duplicate title and description
Hi, When SEOMOZ returns the crawl report results and it shows duplicate descriptions, is it referring to the meta description or is it referring to the actual product description? I have up to 30 products for many different sports teams. Since I have 30 products for as many teams, most of my products are the same and he only thing I did when I populated the site was to change the team name. I left the product description the same otherwise. Thanks, Don
On-Page Optimization | | ge01734000 -
Getting page cached
I am reworking some content that is deep in my site. What is the best way for google to find it? Some of the pages were cached about 3 weeks ago, but I don't want to wait too long to get them to see the new content (and links).
On-Page Optimization | | azguy0 -
Original content and the Google Panda Update
We are an online furniture store with about 1300 products on the site, and we mostly use the catalogue descriptions for the product. Recently I have been reading about One Way Furniture: http://ecommerceprnews.com/e-commerce_articles/2011/03/one-way-furniture-shifts-toward-quality-content-after-google-panda-update-201928.htm They are a big american online furniture which seemed to have lost about a 3rd of there traffic due to being punished in the panda update. Now it seems they are blaming the fact they use they use catalogue descriptions for the product (like us), and now they are going to rewrite all their product descriptions. We are a small company and rewriting 1300 products (meaningfully) is no small task. Looking at our own traffic we have taken a small slump since feb after about 18 months of general increased month on month traffic ( bar seasonal dips and boost), but we didn't have a "fall of the cliff" like One Way Furniture. But have been expanding into other areas (and there for new keywords), so we had expected to be increasing our traffic. So the question is, how important is unique content for all our products? is it worth all the time and money to fix all the pages? Our plan is to make sure our category pages (and there for landing pages) have unique content, would that be enough on its own, or are the product pages damaging the site over all?
On-Page Optimization | | eunaneunan0